WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

Chapter 175

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The regressor wanders (11)

After the regression, I climbed the mountain on leaden feet, dragging myself step by step toward the summit. When I finally reached the top, a familiar face lifted its gaze to meet mine.

"Who are you?"

A wrinkled old man, head tilted, a carved statue in his hand. Something surged up inside me and I couldn't speak.

"..."

"A quiet young man. This type usually values efficiency. I'll get straight to explaining the task."

"...Please give me the C-grade Trait Selection."

"From this moment, a list will appear before your eyes... how did you know?"

After receiving the slip of paper that read 'C-grade Trait Selection,' I walked straight through the blue portal. This time, instead of rushing back to my studio apartment, I stretched out on the soft bed on Floor 1 and lay there, staring up at the ceiling.

"..."

It was strange, when I really thought about it. I'd been through enough regressions that the elder felt familiar to me, but to him, I was a stranger every single time. No matter how alike our outlooks were, no matter how much I felt I understood him... I hadn't thought someone could open up that deeply, that fast. People just don't work that way.

"I told you to be careful with your ability."

The elder must have figured it out, one way or another. That was why the way he looked at me had been slowly shifting each time.

Apparently, repeating regression near an archangel was dangerous. The reason Raphael hadn't noticed on Floor 5, even after all those loops, was probably because he'd been nothing more than a projection. An illusion. I got lucky. There was no other way to put it.

"Not regressing at the end of Floor 2 was the right call."

And at the same time, it shrank the space I had to maneuver. Going forward, floors with archangels, or beings of comparable standing, would have to be handled with as few regressions as possible.

"..."

I summoned an extra pillow into the air and pressed it down over my face. With each breath, soft fabric softener drifted up and did something to quiet the noise in my chest.

If a world failed to climb the Tower, it became part of the Tower itself. The memory surfaced faintly, the dwarves on Floor 11, all that boisterous drive and cheer. Even after being absorbed into the Tower's structure, they had tried so hard to keep living. Because there was truly no going back for them.

"Floor 11 was probably the forest where the dwarves lived... and Floor 12 was probably a city they built underground after the air ran out."

The elder had said Floor 12 was furnished with objects you'd only ever find inside the Tower. Which meant the floors ahead wouldn't be limited to fantasy settings. Modern backdrops would start appearing too.

"What I still can't figure out is... Floors 13 and 14."

Floor 14, where they built machines, had a forest as its backdrop. Honestly, just from the shape of the things, I had no idea what they were for. Probably machines built to fight monsters, or machines built to deal with the elder himself. Either of those I could accept.

Floor 13 was the real problem. Piecing together what the elder had told me, the most likely conclusion was that he had been the one who ordered the box transported by carriage. The fact that the nun had said, "How can you do this after seeing the puppet," confirmed at least that much.

The question was... why he had collected that dark energy. And whether the Tower itself was the reason it existed at all. Those were the two things that mattered.

Why had the elder collected the dark energy? And had it come into being because of the Tower?

"It doesn't seem like he chose not to tell me. He couldn't."

His complexion had drained whiter and whiter the more he spoke. The elder had been taking on real risk just by saying what he'd said, sharing things that weren't meant to be shared. Or maybe he'd factored in my regression, knowing it would all be undone once I looped back. That was plausible too.

If he had accounted for that, then the things he hadn't been able to say about the dark energy from Floor 13 were genuinely off-limits. Every unanswered question I had right now tied back to something at the very core of this Tower. No point dwelling on them. Any answer I arrived at would be pure guesswork.

What I needed to think about was the advice the elder had left me.

"..."

Build companions you can trust. Share the rewards. Dedicate yourself to the world, but do not make enemies along the way.

And above all else... kill those who need to be killed. Do it early, and do it properly.

But at the same time, he had affirmed that my approach was right. Since I'd never told him about my regressions, the "method" he'd called correct wasn't the looping itself. It was what I'd done with him, what I'd tried to do with others. Getting close to people. Empathizing with them.

So the elder had wanted me to read the other players clearly, through repeated regressions. To draw a firm line between those worth keeping and those that needed to go.

"...I don't know."

I kept going back and forth on it. Could I trust the other players? Could I trust Association President Michael Zetter? What about Yoon Joong-hyun from Floor 4? Kang Chan from Floor 3? The Ahn brothers? The Japanese Grim Reaper? Could I trust any of them?

The only player I genuinely trusted was Choi Ji-won. Park Cheol-jin the firefighter counted too, but he'd been focusing on his work lately more than climbing, so I'd set him aside.

The elder had wanted me to draw clear lines. Kill the ones that needed killing before it was too late, and turn the ones worth keeping into real allies.

My best guess was that he'd gone back and forth many times on whether to wipe out the old guard entirely, the Empire and all the forces clinging to the past. He'd probably agonized a long time over killing that player who could manipulate the atmosphere too.

But in the end, he had chosen to bring everyone along with him. And the world was destroyed because of it. That outcome, I imagined, had become a hatred for foolish humans and an equal hatred for his own indecision.

The problem was that the elder's regret pointed directly at the path Ji-won was trying to walk.

Ji-won didn't want to kill anyone unless there was absolutely no other choice. She believed that if she led by example, set the standard herself, they could climb this Tower all the way to the end.

She trusted me. She believed that with my regression, they could reach the end of this Tower through peaceful means.

"..."

But by the time we reached Floor 50, let alone Floor 60... I couldn't be certain the same thing that happened in the elder's world wouldn't happen in ours. By then, the top-tier players would very likely have gotten their hands on the kind of power capable of wiping out everyone below them. Trying to deal with it after the fact would already be too late.

"I shouldn't decide this alone."

This wasn't something I could just call on my own. It needed to be worked through with Ji-won.

I finished turning it over in my head, opened the portal back to reality, and found Ji-won lying face-down on the bed, waiting for me.

"...Jun-ho? You don't look well... did you regress multiple times?"

"Yeah."

"...What happened?"

"There's something I need to tell you."

"Alright. I'm listening."

"So... you know that elder on Floor 15. He's actually a survivor from a world the Tower destroyed. The way his world ended was..."

"Jun-ho."

"...There was another player who had already become far too strong, and..."

"Jun-ho!"

"Huh, what?"

Ji-won grabbed my shoulders and shook me, gently.

"...I can't hear you. From where I was sitting, you just looked like you were completely still. Doing nothing."

"What...?"

Ji-won couldn't perceive what I'd been trying to tell her about the elder. I tried a few workarounds. None of them worked. A familiar sensation. The Tower's filter, doing its job.

"..."

Only then did it sink in, fully. There was no one I could share this with. Whatever the elder truly was, he had to be operating on a level I couldn't even begin to measure. The things he'd shared with me had nearly cost him everything. There was no way someone at my level could pass that on to anyone else.

"...Should we just talk about Floor 15, then?"

In the end, the weight of it was mine alone to carry. The only thing I could share with Ji-won was what I knew about the future Floor 15 would bring.

"The statues will almost certainly become monsters and invade Earth. The difficulty of the invasion probably varies depending on what reward each person picked. Since you chose the elder's wise counsel, the lowest number, the elder I saw was carving a goblin-shaped statue."

"Don't you think most people besides us probably picked a higher-numbered reward?"

"Most likely. Whether they understood what it meant or not... everyone would've just grabbed whatever seemed most useful."

"Then..."

"A year from now... we should count on dragons coming to Earth. That much is confirmed."

Honestly, I wasn't sure. It was only the penalty from Floor 15, so would the dragon even be that powerful? Or, given the year-long lead time, would something frighteningly strong come crawling out? Part of me wanted to go back to Floor 15 and ask. But what stuck with me was the fact that the elder had deliberately wiped his own memory. Given the goodwill he'd shown me, it was clear he'd done it for my sake. If that was true, it made no sense to keep looping back there.

"Hmm..."

The structure of Floor 15 was already figured out. I knew the elder's hidden circumstances, and I knew what future awaited if we failed to see this Tower through to the end. What was left now was just one thing.

"Ten months... I guess we'll have to wait and see."

Just waiting through those ten months and watching it unfold with my own eyes.

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